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Chemistry, Physics, and the Laws of Nature

Imagine one day we explored a part of Mars that no one from Earth had ever visited and we saw rocks that were placed in a formation that read, “This is a message from God. I exist.” We could assign an infinitesimal statistical probability that the formation was caused randomly. We could not, however, assign a statistical probability that there was intelligent design.

Occam’s razor is a problem-solving principle that has often been paraphrased as “the simplest solution is most likely the right one.” What is the simplest solution in this scenario? Just because you can assign a statistical probability, albeit an infinitesimal one, to one answer while you cannot assign one to another answer, doesn’t make the first answer more probable. It makes the comparison incomparable. Intelligent design cannot be measured, but consider whether you think the elegance in its order can be an act of randomness.

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